“Justine”—he grinned down at her—“are you jealous?”
“Please! This is important. Did Isabella tell you it came direct from Kantil, that Doi would sanction the spending?”
“I honestly don’t recall exactly. Isabella made the suggestion, so naturally I assumed it came from Kantil. Lovely though Isabella is, she’s only a first-life girl. Why, who else do you think would make it?”
“Isabella’s a Halgarth,” Justine said.
“Oh, no.” He threw his hands into the air with exasperation. “We’re back to the motion for a vote on Myo again.”
“It’s not the vote.”
“It’s looking that way to me. You took it personally. Admit it.”
“I know Valetta caught me off guard in there; Thompson would never have let that sneak up on him. It’s beginning to look as though I just don’t have his aptitude for this job.”
“Nonsense. You’re more than capable. You outmaneuvered Valetta beautifully, and gave yourself time to build support for the vote. You’re a natural.”
“It doesn’t seem that way. Damn that Columbia for forcing my hand like this. It’ll be a real show of strength in the next committee. I’m not even sure I can win.”
“You have my vote.”
“Yeah, right, thanks.”
“This really bugs you; and it’s not the first time you’ve clashed with the Halgarths and their allies. Why don’t you just declare open warfare, and have the fleet attack Solidade.”
“Because it’s their fleet, Rammy.”
“So that’s it! Gore’s pissed that they hijacked his pet project.”
“The navy isn’t a project, it’s essential to our survival. We’re at war, fighting for our very existence as a species, and the Halgarths are taking over the Commonwealth’s entire defense policy. That’s not healthy.”
“Don’t let this Senate spat blind you. Sheldon remains in ultimate command. Thanks to CST his Dynasty will always have the final say. And Kime is still Admiral; he’s Sheldon’s man, in alliance with Los Vada. With Columbia, the Halgarths only have control of planetary defense. It’s a classic Dynasty carve-up. The power structures balance out.”
“All right.” She tried to put on a convinced expression for his benefit.
“That’s better. So how about lunch? Just you and me, and no business.”
“Old times,” she said mournfully. “Sorry, Rammy, I’ve got to get back to the office. I need to start making calls.”
His hopeful expression gave way to something more melancholic. “I understand. My advice: call Crispin. He was never a Halgarth man.”
She gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “Thanks. See you soon.”
It was Thompson’s office. The taste was his, all lush reds and gold-brown wood furniture. She hadn’t made a single change, she didn’t have the right. When he came back, he could sit down behind his vast desk and carry on as if nothing had happened.
If the world still exists then.
Justine dismissed her aides, and ignored the urgent briefing files as she settled into her brother’s chair.
So Isabella hadn’t specifically said it was Patricia’s suggestion. That wasn’t a lot to go on, although it deepened her own suspicions that Patricia was being played like the rest of them.
“Could really do with your advice, Tommy,” she told the room. The rejuvenation clinic their family owned and used was just on the outskirts of Washington, not quite twenty-five kilometers from Senate Hall as the crow flies. Right now his clone fetus was there, about ten centimeters long, growing inside a womb tank.
She looked down at her own abdomen, resting her hand lightly against it. Her stomach was still perfectly flat, not that she’d been to the gym for weeks now. “You’re going to be born before your uncle,” she said softly. “He’s going to be surprised about that.” Along with an awful lot of other people.
With her real hand resting contentedly above the baby, her virtual hand touched Paula Myo’s icon.
“Yes, Senator?”
Does she ever sleep? “I have some unpleasant news you should be aware of. I was just ambushed in the Security Oversight Committee. Senator Valetta Halgarth asked for your immediate withdrawal from Senate Security.”
“On what grounds?”
“Very shaky ones. Fortunately. She cited interference in navy intelligence operations, claimed you were misusing government resource to pursue personal goals.”
“The observation on Alessandra Baron.”
“Precisely. I managed to delay the vote on a procedural point about the agenda. But it is only a delay. It looks like Columbia really has got it in for you.”
“I know that. Thank you for covering for me.”
“I’ll talk to the other senators, rebuild my strategic support in that committee. I should be able to pull a majority onto my side. Right now there are several people who are unhappy with the Halgarths. They’re not my family’s natural allies, but I should be able to swing them around.”
“I understand. This could be very revealing.”
“How so?”
“Do you have any indication which way the Sheldons intend to vote? It goes against the Starflyer’s interests to have me remain in Senate Security.”
“Good point. I’ll try and find out.”
***
MorningLightMountain was annoyed with humans. It had known they would strike back after its preliminary incursion into the Commonwealth; such a move was inevitable. What was less welcome was the manner of the response. It had been expecting wormholes to open above the captured planets, disgorging quantities of ships and missiles to assault its new installations. So it had dutifully prepared for that scenario, building the strongest force field generators it had over the factories and refineries it was constructing on the new worlds, placing thousands of ships in orbit armed with powerful weaponry.
With all the knowledge it had gathered about the Commonwealth and its abilities, MorningLightMountain was certain this would be enough to ward off the human attack. There was an astonishing amount of information left behind amid the wreckage of the abandoned human cities; storage crystals that contained entire encyclopedias, scientific theories and research, engineering designs, economic and industrial statistics on each of the Commonwealth worlds, and a truly endless supply of “entertainment.” For the first time MorningLightMountain was grateful it had animated the Bose memories; without that small insight into human thinking it would have been extremely difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. And humans produced an astonishing amount of fiction to amuse themselves.
To its disappointment, there was little information available on the SI. There was no verifiable record on any of its new twenty-three worlds as to the exact location of Vinmar. Once the Commonwealth worlds were converted to Prime life, it would have to search all the star systems within two hundred light-years of Earth. Some files speculated that the SI was no longer physically based, but had transformed itself to an energy-based entity. MorningLightMountain could not decide if these, too, were works of fiction.
It also had humans to extract information from. There were tens of thousands of discarded bodies lying buried in the rubble or trapped in smashed vehicles. Removing their memorycells was an easy operation. Living humans presented more trouble; they struggled and fought the soldier motiles. In the end MorningLightMountain simply shot them all, and recovered their memorycells that way. It learned that there was very little useful information recorded in these personal units; they only ever held memories, and human minds were not reliable. After animating a few inside isolated immotiles, it found that most were even more unstable than Bose. Even more surprising, few were as knowledgeable. MorningLightMountain had always assumed Bose was an inferior human specimen.
As it tapped into more and more databases, so its picture of the Commonwealth strengthened, building on the original loose interpretation that came from the Bose memories. It began to reclaim and modify human cybernetic fabrication systems, turning the machinery to producing components and machines of its own design. Buildings were modified to house its facilities, roads were used for vehicles. Bridges rebuilt.
The one segment of human technology it discarded was the electronics. MorningLightMountain simply did not trust the processors and programs that were available to it. There were hundreds of thousands of files detailing hidden subversive applications built into arrays and software. Ever since the first communications net was commissioned on Earth, humans seemed to have devoted a colossal amount of time and effort to conduct seditious assaults against each other inside its virtual boundaries. They disrupted the activities of their rivals, renegades launched viral attacks for the fun of it, and criminal elements stole from anyone with weaker encryption defenses in a massive electronic version of the territorial struggles that the immotile Primes used to wage constantly. After centuries of development, their skill in this arena was deadly. Their electronic warfare attacks against MorningLightMountain’s soldier motiles during the original incursion were proof of their digital superiority. It did not have the experience nor ability to uncover and guard against such digital deceit. Consequentially, it simply removed the arrays from human equipment, and inserted itself into the control circuits. Such substitution absorbed a great deal of thought capacity. One of its priorities on its new worlds was to establish immotile groups that were used to manage and exploit human engineering.
Progress in this and other areas was advancing well. Then the Commonwealth made its counterstrike. Wormholes opened above all the new twenty-three worlds. Sure enough, missiles flooded through. MorningLightMountain sent its ships to intercept. It had a huge advantage: humans were reluctant to use fusion bombs, fearing their collateral environmental damage, a trait it had learned from both Bose and subsequent human personality animation, as well as datamining political proclamations. All of the weapons it directed to repel the attack were nuclear.
Then more wormholes appeared, this time on the ground, flashing in and out of existence. MorningLightMountain struggled to keep up with plotting their emergence. Once more, humans were successfully disrupting its internal communications. Flyers were sent out to each location, encountering some resistance as aerobots zoomed out to confront them. The automatic machines were nimble, but not strong enough to defeat superior numbers of flyers. And superior numbers was MorningLightMountain’s specific advantage.
After seventeen hours, the attack ended. MorningLightMountain was victorious. It had sustained some damage, but there had been no strategic defeat. Motiles and machinery were directed to repair the broken systems. After studying the attack pattern, it began to strengthen and modify its defenses accordingly. The Commonwealth was weaker than it had predicted.
Many hours later, the disturbances began. There had always been brief clashes with armed humans on its new twenty-three worlds. Several hundred motiles had
